Kyle Bingman, who took down her awesome post about geodes and spoiled my enthusiasm for the Wednesday photo-meme, posted the above TED talk, which I think is essential viewing for anyone who cares about the Iraq War.
Deborah Scranton speaks about the making of her Iraq documentary, “The War Tapes,” the footage for which was filmed by soldiers in-country.
“It will be a better country in twenty years because we were there. I hope.”
Of the many thoughts it provoked, some relate to the post below. Scranton, who gave cameras to soldiers in Iraq and had them shoot their own video and then worked with them and their diaries to fill in an unbelievable account of the war on the human scale, relates some anecdotes that I consider significant.
She tells of a soldier approaching her after a showing and describing what is evidently a rather common -and heartbreaking, symbolic- problem: the accidental running down of civilians by Humvees. While his gunner threw candy to children, one ran too close to the vehicle and was killed:
“I killed a child, and I have children; I haven’t been able to tell my wife; I’m afraid she’ll think I’m a monster.”
It’s one of the saddest and most exemplary illustrations of the problem with conflicts borne of strategic planning and intellectual determination to refashion the world politically. She hugs the soldier and says it will be all right; what else is there to do but be good to one another? She asks of those who say “I oppose the war but support the soldiers,” “When you support someone, are you a friend to them?”
I had a philosophy professor fond of relating the story of the early Christian apostle John, who when too old to walk was carried by the arms into the church in Ephesus to speak; at each meeting, he said only one thing: “Little children, love one another.”
Tired of hearing the same message -and from someone who could speak to them about Jesus directly!- the congregants asked why this was all he said; he answered, “It is the Lord’s command, and if this alone be done, it is enough.”
By referring to us all as “children,” I think the text echoes Errol Morris: error is the central feature of our lives, and we are perpetually incompetent, weak, lost, and dangerous. All there is for us is love, but should we have it it is enough.
This reminds of this part of me that always worries what the turning important(?) experiences into films would take away from them. Certainly, most (I would think) documentary filmmakers are aware of the certain levels of exploitation involved, and you cannot deny that documentaries are, at least partly, entertainment. But other times, especially when somebody points out that you shouldn’t do something because it exploits others, I like to think that any kind of art must exploit someone or something at one point or another, but this is so arbitrary that it could be a justification of pretty much anything. Though in this case, most would probably agree that it is important that this documentary be made and be seen, and anyway, most people involved sound like they are in support of the cause… and… I don’t know where this is going, so I am going to stop now. Ahh. Excuse my inability to form coherent thoughts.
(It never occurred to me what people meant when they said they support the soldiers. To me, to support seemed to imply only that you approve, mostly ideologically, of their decisions and actions, in which case, how can you support soldiers but not the war? In this light, now, it makes much more sense.)
